Fear mongering by the Republicans about voter fraud is disgusting. It is clearly a tactic to convince law makers to enact unnecessary ID laws that disenfranchise lower income people and minorities, folks who are more likely to vote Democrat. If you don’t remember, the reason Alberto Gonzalez fired those U.S. Attorneys was because they weren’t taking more voter fraud cases. It turned out that there simply weren’t many voter fraud cases to prosecute. For more recent reporting on this subject, I suggest you listen to the entire episode of Democracy Now! that aired on the 9th. On it, Ohio’s Secretary of State talks about the myth of voter fraud.

John McCain and his campaign have decided to continue this classic Republican strategy. They have painted the community organization Acorn as a criminal enterprise that,

is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

Is this accurate? First of all, I have to say that Acorn’s policy of paying their registration workers per registration was a dumb idea. They have now changed to an hourly wage for their employees. I certainly don’t believe that the organization knowlingly and purposefully filled the voter rolls with fake names. We have to ask ourselves why they would even do that? Who would that help? Do fake voter registrations actually lead to fraudulent votes? An interesting article on ABC News reports that election experts say no. A representative from Acorn debated a Republican election attorney on Democracy Now! aird on the 15th. It was telling to hear the arguments on both sides.

It seems to me that Obama should be proud of any links to Acorn.

EDIT: The most recent episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal came up in my iPod playlist just as I was submitting this post. Please check out the video of his interview with Mark Crispin Miller about the challenges that legitimate voters will face this election. Especially relevant to this post is his take on the fabricated scandal surrounding Acorn.